At midnight today, the counterterrorist operation (KTO) introduced in Chechnya nine years ago was terminated. It is a step that was due a long time ago. There has been no war as such in the republic for years. The Russian army is there as a formality and no military operations are being conducted. According to Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, the terrorist underground numbers no more than 70 people, and to all appearances that figure is most likely not far from the truth.

However, that is not the point. After the termination of the KTO, interior ministry forces will be withdrawn from Chechnya, and the Vostok (east) and Zapad (west) battalions of the ministry of defence will be disbanded, leaving the republic with no single force that is not under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov. Power in its entirety will transfer to his hands.

Will there be fewer killings as a result? On one hand, the impunity factor – which meant any extrajudicial execution could be written off as part of the struggle against terrorism – will undoubtedly recede. In recent times, people who were suspected of being connected to rebel fighters were usually killed on the spot rather than being arrested.

On the other hand, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has said that when necessary it will be possible to introduce a state of emergency in a specific zone for a specific period. In principle, that is a formality, because for several years practically the only real force in the republic has been made up of structures under Kadyrov's control: the Chechen interior ministry unit known as the "oil regiment", the Sever (north) battalion of Chechen special forces and Kadyrov's security guard, which is considered all-powerful.

So there's no need to talk about changing the legal framework. How can you discuss legality when Kadyrov's right-hand man, Adam Delimkhanov, an MP in the Russian parliament, is accused by police in Dubai of assassinating the Hero of Russia, Sulim Yamadayev? Yamadayev's men had been in a state of war with Kadyrov – right up to exchanges of gunfire and the blockade of their base in Gudermes. Before that, Yamadayev's brother, Ruslan, was murdered in Moscow. Earlier still, the commander of the FSB (federal security service) Highlander group, Movsadi Baysarov – who had also come into conflict with Kadyrov – was killed in Moscow. And so on: the chain continues. All of those murders had a demonstrative character.

The announcement that it's all done and dusted with the rebels in Chechnya is also far from objective. True, their number is not so great, but the trouble is that Kadyrov's regime is itself responsible for procreating resistance, by giving those who don't agree with him no other choice than to take up arms and head for the hills.

Killings and extrajudicial punishments go on now, and they will continue. President Kadyrov says that ending the KTO will attract investment to the republic. I don't know. De jure, Chechnya is part of the Russian federation. But de facto, it is a mono-ethnic republic, to which citizens of Russia do not travel on any account. No one takes holidays in Chechnya's resorts, no one does business there, no one invests money there and no one is buying real estate.

Ending the KTO is purely a populist move. In fact it means only one thing: that the Kremlin has crowned Ramzan Kadyrov to reign in the region and given him total freedom as the rightful and personal master of Chechnya. A Chechnya where one thing is already clear: his word is law.

• Arkady Babchenko is a former Russian soldier who fought in both Chechen wars and whose book, One Soldier's War in Chechnya, documents the brutality of the conflicts. He writes for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.